Sagittarius A*

Astronomers have revealed the first image of Sagittarius A*. A Supermassive Black Hole at the center of our galaxy Milky Way. Sgr A* was significantly harder than imaging M87* which is over one thousand times larger. Though Sgr A* is closer to Earth than M87 the fact it is significantly smaller means the gas surrounding the black hole Its accretion disc rotates at a much faster speed, which resulted in a blurrier image than the one revealed in 2019 of M87*. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team revealed that tens of millions of images taken by its worldwide network of radio telescopes were combined to provide the final image that has been shared with the world. Sagittarius A* plays a dual role in our galaxy, acting as both a potential threat and a stabilizing anchor.

“We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity," said EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei. "These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very centre of our galaxy and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings.”

One of the biggest threat in the immense cosmos is also the reason for the stability of our Galaxy!